The Bell System Technical Journal 



Fol. XXIII October, 1944 No. 4 



THE CONQUEST OF DISTANCE BY WIRE TELEPHONY 



A Story of Transmission Development From the Early Days 

 of Loading To the Wide Use of Thermionic Repeaters 



By THOMAS SHAW 



Editorial Foreword 



SOME few months ago, in anticipation of the retirement of Dr. F. B. 

 Jewett, an informal committee undertook to discover such action as 

 the Journal might appropriately take to commemorate the event. The 

 various possibilities finally narrowed down to one, a historical review ap- 

 pearing for various reasons to be the most suitable. 



The period to be covered by the review was not difficult to fix. For 

 sentimental reasons its beginning should naturally tally with Dr. Jewett's 

 appearance upon the scene of telephone engineermg, but as this followed 

 close upon the invention of the loading coil, such a beginning had more 

 than sentiment to recommend it. 



The review is carried through the creation of the high vacuum tube 

 to the demonstration by large scale practical application that this was the 

 keystone of an art which would open up a new era in transmission of the 

 voice. An examination of the record shows that the last twenty-five years of 

 the art of telephone engineering have been adequately chronicled from year 

 to year, almost from month to month, in the technical press. The imme- 

 diately preceding period of approximately fifteen years covered by the re- 

 view was badly in need of a historian in spite of the fact that in some re- 

 spects the events of those years were as significant as any that have occurred 

 subsequently. 



Such considerations led to the decision to record these events while the 

 story as it stood in the minds of certain of the chief participants was readily 

 available. But while a committee may reach a decision, it is likely to prove 

 a poor instrument of accomplishment. In consequence, the task of com- 

 piling the history has fallen upon the shoulders of a single individual, and 

 we believe a very competent one. Mr. Shaw is to be congratulated in 

 capturmg to an unusual degree the spirit of the period which intervenes be- 

 tween the introduction of the loading coil and the completion of the first 

 transcontinental line. He has compiled his histor>' only after a painstaking 

 review of the written record and many interviews with its surviving prin- 



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